Some of my peers are idiots.

The BBQ Pit
1

The student health office here got some doses of the flu vaccine. Not enough for everyone, which is understandable. They started giving them out on Thursday: students with serious health problems and faculty/administration over 60. Friday it was faculty/administration with health problems. Today, it was the rest of everyone, first-come, first-serve. Some people did not get one - as I said, we all had fair warning. If you wait until two PM on the last day, they may well be out. Some people who did not get one are very, very angry.

Ok. If you were, say, my friend who has really, really severe asthma, and did not get vaccinated, I could understand the outrage. If you were one of my professors, who’s nearly 70, and for some reason did not have anyplace else to get a vaccine (like, say, an actual doctor), I could understand the outrage.

If you’re a perfectly healthy 18- or 19-year old student? Suck it up, man. You can pretty much, using some common sense, avoid even getting sick. Wash your hands, drink some orange juice, don’t cuddle with sick folk. Hey, look, you’re not sick! Wow!

But say that fails. Say you don’t like to wash your hands. Say you get the flu. As I said before, you’re young and healthy. It may knock you out for a day or two. But, look, it’s really pretty easy. Stay in bed. Drink lots of tea or whatever. Take some DayQuil. Bitch and moan for a few days, fine, we’ll put up with it. Being sick does suck, I admit.

But, really, you’re not going to die. The flu vaccine is only vaguely effective against getting the flu - there are other strains, y’know. And then there’s always the possibility that you’ll (gasp) still manage to get sick, with something other than the flu. Dear lord - obviously, for the next six months, we all should seal ourselves in biohazard suits and not remove them until June. :rolleyes:

Also, to the girl down the hall who was absolutely horrified when she heard I was not going to even try to get a flu shot? And then said I was being ridiculously selfish and totally bitchy? Fuck you. You’re just an idiot.

2

I’ve never had a flu shot, I don’t know why healthy people make such a big deal out of it. However, I’ve also never had the flu, either. I mean, if you have some kind of illness that would make getting the flu a huge deal, then you should get a flu shot. Otherwise, if it’s in short supply, leave it for the people who really need it, rather than those who just want it. It sucks, but you still have a pretty good chance of not getting the flu even without the shot. I mean, I’ve made it 23 years without getting it.

Also, Ninja, what, exactly, did she think was selfish about not getting a flu shot for yourself?

3

Herd immunity, one presumes; it’s “selfish” because if you get infected you can infect others. They’d have a point if there were enough shots for everyone, but of course this is asinine when there are limited numbers of shots available.

4

I think her ‘logic’ worked thusly: I don’t get a flu shot → I get the flu → she gets flu. Which makes no sense, becuase, to begin with, she did get a flu shot, and me not doing so doesn’t mean I’m going to get sick… :smack:

5

Yeah, I don’t get flu shots either. I’ve had a few, mostly when I was younger and Mom basically forced us to, but I now don’t go out of my way to get one. As it is now, if there are plenty of those nasal flumist thingies available, I might get one of those. Otherwise, bah. I only get sick once a year and that was a couple weeks ago when I got a cold.

6

I was severely asthmatic growing up - still have the problem, but it’s well under control now, and mostly only shows up as exercise-induced or when I have any kind of cold.

I have almost always gotten the flu shot - I work with small children, and they’re germ factories. Ontario also vaccinated all of us asthmatic freaks against some forms of pneumonia. It helped wonders!

Two years ago, I missed out on the flu shot because I had strep (thanks, 6 year old student!) and the doc felt I wasn’t well enough to get it. Then, I travelled a lot and just didn’t get around to getting it done.

Well, I did end up getting influenza. It was UGLY. It’s not a cold, or what we usually refer to as “the flu”. The after effects of the thing lasted for WEEKS - it was like having mono, all over again! Healthy folks can battle influenza much like others would battle a cold. Some of us with weak respiratory systems tend to end up out for weeks…

Urgh.

So yeah - I get pissed when I find out some people are actually going to clinics demanding a shot when they don’t really NEED one, and then seeing someone who really DOES need it go without.

shrug

7

I have never gotten the flu shot. Most years I don’t get the flu. Sometimes I do. So what? Stay home for a few days, reading books and watching videos and not going to work. Not such a terrible thing.

8

I got the flu for the first time when I was 20. Shit knocked me out for a week. And I was still kinda sick a week afterwards. I lost five pounds because I couldn’t keep anything down. I gave it to my sister, who had to nurse me despite her own sickness because I was weaker. Bad times, bad times.

Healthy people have died from influenza.

All that said, I think the flu shot rationing has been overhyped and I think people need to calm down.

9

If those are your symptoms, you don’t have influenza.

QtM, MD

10

I once heard it put this way: imagine that you are laid up in bed with flu like symptoms. You look out the window and see several one hundred dollar bills lying in your yard. If you can’t get out of bed to go pick them up, you have the flu.

11

While I appriciate the stoic impulse that one shouldn’t try to avoid illness but should rather take it on the chin with a grin, for some of us missing a week or so of work is a very big deal. I teach: if I have to be out of work abruptly for a week, that impacts the education of 115 kids. Hospitals are streched so thin these days that if a mess of orderlies and nurses are out for a week, people’s health care is seriously impacted. Huge chunks of people out there are social workers, emergency service providers, ministers, who just can’t stay home a week. Hell, there are a lot of people–including students–out there that work in jobs that don’t provide sick leave, and missing a quarter of a month’s wages means that they can’t pay for rent and groceries.

That said, this year I opted out of a vaccine because it isn’t a matter of life and death for me. But every other year I get one, and it’s not that I am some sort of wimp–hell, after a week with my little darlings any excuse to stay away can sound sweet–but because a big part of my professional responsibility is to do whatever I can to make sure I do not miss work.

12

I totally respect this. Some people can’t just finish up whatever project at work a week later; I understand that, and if you feel like you need a vaccine, fine, get it. My problem is the people who don’t (to be rather tactless) effect anyone. The main subject of my irritation doesn’t even have a job. They go to class, that’s pretty much it. They need to get the hell over themselves.

Also, I think a lot of people miss the fact that getting a flu shot does not mean you won’t get the flu. It means you won’t get one particular strain of the flu, which some numbers jock at a desk somewhere decided was most likely to be big this year.

13

An awful lot of the people who died from the Spanish Influenza epidemic of the 19-teens were healthy young adults. So being young and healthy is no guarantee of safety.

I’ve had a really bad case of the real flu twice in my life. I remember feeling like just dying and getting it over would have been highly preferable to that flu. So I get a flu shot if I can. Not this year, alas.

At least my elderly mother in Seattle, who’s had heart problems and bronchitis four times in the past six months, was able to luck into a flu shot. My 54-year-old sister with Parkinson’s, not so lucky.

However, Papa Tiger works on the grounds of a hospital (Walter Reed Army Medical Center) and is up in the main hospital building, in patient areas, almost daily. He reports there are no flu shots for hospital staff. Zero. Zip. None. They “may” have them in January.

What is wrong with this picture?

14

Ack. Also: I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to avoid illness. You really should (it’s healthier that way). I just think that people tend to overlook the far easier way: wash your hands, get your vitamin C, don’t smear dirty tissues all over your face. Simple, really. No drugs needed.

15

I know. That was tragic. It was also before what we refer to as modern medicine.

Also - I freely admit that that makes no sense about your husband.

16

In our state, healthy adults are not getting the flu shot at all. The only people that are allowed to get the vaccine are people with chronic illness, the elderly, etc. That’s it! Those 18 and 19 year old whiners should be grateful they’re in an area where the shots are available to them at all!

17

I don’t understand this whole flu shot “epidemic”. We’ve survived for hundreds and thousands of years without it. Sure, there are some deaths every year from the flu. Sure, people feel like death when they get the flu. Sure, it sucks.

But honestly, why the big deal? I get the flu at every possible opportunity. No, not the coughing, wheezing, sneezing feel crappy “flu” that every moron with an insurance card seems to run to their doctor for-cause that’s a cold. No, I mean the awful, head-swelling, upper respiratory infection-having, racking body pains, soaringly high fever type of flu. It’s almost a ritual for me.

I just don’t see how we could have become reliant upon yet another fucking vaccine after less than 10 years of regular use for a majority of the populace. It’s ridiculous. It makes us a silly fucking society for our mock “outrage” and catastrophism shown when something like this occurs.

Sam

18

20-50 million dead in the great pandemic of 1918, especially young healthy people. 20-30 thousand people dead each year from the flu. Over 250,000 so sickened they must have intensive medical intervention for the complications.

Multiple Billions in lost wages and intensive health care for those who get it but don’t die.

If you’re not in health care, you don’t see the hell that the influenza season is. Stacking them in the ER, IV drips running, oxygen, seeing who needs intubation and ventilation, seeing who can be moved out of the ICU so we can move someone with respiratory collapse into the ICU. I hate having to ventilate people in the hallways.

All drastically reduced by vaccination.

And if we have another Pandemic like in 1918, expect to see our health care system break down.

19

I heard that this year’s strain is significantly similar to last years strain. Has any medico type heard any such rumor?

20

These are large numbers.
What’re the odds of a healthy young person with nearly a full half of a modicum of common sense becoming so ill from the flu that they are in grave danger?